He loved her.

Prologue: And so, a love story was born.

Coffee. My salvation, obsession, and one of my many vices. As a young aspiring writer I used to drink a few cups every night as I slaved away at a typewriter tapping away at the keys, hoping for some wonderful work of art, but nothing ever seemed good enough. I was my own worst critic.

I initially started to write by hand, on paper, almost a year ago. My penmanship was monstrous although I wrote stories in record time. But every single time I finished one I would feel like it wasn't going to meet anyone's expectations (not that anyone knew me enough to have any), so the pages were crumpled up and the ideas, long forgotten. After wasting many pages and tossing out double the amount of tissues crying myself to sleep over my inability to produce anything even remotely decent, which was always, I took up typing.

Now typing is an art in itself. One I still have yet to master that's for sure... First, there are the somewhat heavy keys of the typewriter and the sweet sound of the keys as you tap away (beautiful but a tad difficult to work with), then there's the whole bringing the page down a notch act and lining it up, and don't even get me started on making mistakes.

As of recently my writing "career" (if that's what you'd call it) was slowly disintegrating and it felt like there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. My dream of becoming a world-renowned writer was slipping away from me and sinking like it was caught up in quicksand.

Me being a dramatic mess, I'd decided to give it a final go. One last hurrah before I threw everything away for good.

Mustering up every drop of motivation in me I threw myself into writing, drafted up an autobiography idea of sorts, about my ex... It started off really slow, the words biting and as awful as he was in the final moments of our relationship, but the words soon flowed out with ease, heavy emotions dripping from the words as I relived old memories.

After many, many sleepless nights and mediocre drafts, it then began to blossom. A wonderful story about love and adventure and the beauty we can find even in times of war was born from the ashes of my hard work. At that point, calling it a work of art wasn't enough. I hadn't created a work of art. It was something much more.

An echo of the deepest parts of my soul. A time I craved to go back to. A love like no other.

Upon completion, I decided that I wanted to publish it. I felt myself yearning for admiration and applause, for people to know my struggles and tell stories about the things we did for love.

So here it is, an epic love story for the ages.